This is the first course in a Coursera Specialization track involving Web Application Architectures. This course will give you the basic background, terminology and fundamental concepts that you need to understand in order to build modern full stack web applications. A full stack web developer is familiar with each "layer" of the software technologies involved in a web application, including data modeling and database technologies, the web server environment and middleware components, network protocols, the user interface and basic visual design and user interaction concepts.
In this course we will learn by doing. We will start by learning the major components of web application architectures, along with the fundamental design patterns and philosophies that are used to organize them. You will build and continually refine a fully functional full-stack web application as we progress through the modules in this course. Along the way you will be exposed to agile software development practices, numerous tools that software engineers are expected to know how to use, and a modern web application development framework.
This course is also available in Spanish. To join the Spanish version, visit this page: https://www.coursera.org/learn/apliweb.

From the lesson

Module #4 - Middleware

Middleware is an abstraction layer that hides details about hardware devices and other lower-level software services from an application. Middleware services implement common low-level functions, such as communication with the operating system, application servers, database servers, etc., so that application developers do not need to concern themselves with these details, and can instead focus on the application functionality they are trying to provide. In a web application, these services generally make use of the HTTP protocol, and in a web application framework, the MVC design pattern can be thought of as being implemented over the middleware.